1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to data encoding, and more particularly to data encoding techniques that expand data to a high-speed serial video link in such a way that it is invisible to existing receivers such that auxiliary data, i.e. an audio data stream, can be transmitted without any knowledge of the capabilities of the video display to receive auxiliary data.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The Digital Visual Interface Specification, Revision 1.0 (DVI 1.0), published by the Digital Display Working Group (DDWG) describes an encoding scheme that should be used for transmission of video data across an interconnecting cable in a compliant system. The DVI 1.0 encoding algorithm involves the expansion of 8-bit video data to a 10-bit serial word. During active video times, the video data is encoding, and during inactive video times, two binary signals are encoded. On one channel, for example, these two binary signals are used to represent horizontal and vertical synchronizing signals. For active video, the input word is denoted as D0 through D7 (D0 is the LSB). The serial word is denoted S0 through S9 (where S0 is the LSB and the first bit to be sent). The algorithm is shown in FIG. 1 where ‘^’ is defined as an exclusive-OR operation, TC is a ‘Transition Control’ bit, and DC is a ‘DC Balance Control’ bit, as described in further detail herein below.
In order to be able to identify active video data from non-active video data, the inventors of the prior art algorithm set forth above identified the number of transitions within the 10-bit word as a key characteristic that could be detected. Furthermore, certain characters could be sent to uniquely identify the LSB/MSB positions within the serial data stream. In order to prevent the active video characters from being misinterpreted, the TC bit is used to reduce the number of transitions within an active data symbol.